Ninety degrees is nearly twice what the geometry allows. Venus, orbiting between the Earth and the Sun, is confined to a band of about forty-eight degrees on either side, which is why she is seen only in the hours around sunrise and sunset. No square can open. Astrologically this is a statement, not an omission: a person is not set at odds with their own capacity for pleasure by the Sun. What one loves and who one is were never designed to be opponents.
The reader who came here has usually been told they have this square by a badly built application, or has read a description of Venus square Saturn, Mars or Pluto and assumed the Sun was involved. Those are the real sources of trouble in the affections: affection that must be earned, appetite that overrides judgement, and love entangled with power. Any of them will account for the experience of wanting the wrong things at the wrong time. The Sun contributes only proximity, and proximity flatters rather than obstructs.
There remains one genuinely uncomfortable Sun-Venus contact, and it is the semi-square at forty-five degrees, reached only when Venus is near her greatest elongation. It gives a mild and persistent mismatch between what the native is and what the native likes, visible in people whose tastes embarrass them slightly. It is minor, and it is real, and it is the whole of the friction available here. An almanac that prints a full square in its place is trading accuracy for the appearance of completeness.
What It Gives
- ◆no war with one's own pleasures
- ◆an honest minor contact
- ◆tastes that quietly diverge
- ◆affection unopposed by identity
What It Costs
- ◆a square the sky cannot cast
- ◆trouble credited to the wrong planet
- ◆tastes that mildly embarrass their owner
This is one line of a whole chart. The rest of it — every placement, house and aspect at once — is a birth date away.
Cast Your Birth Chart